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If the teacher can get over her initial reaction to the way African Americans are initially presented in Huckleberry Finn (and let's face it, just because they're teaching high school English doesn't mean they actually understand the material), actually READING the book will reveal that it is a strong ANTI slavery, ANTI racist story. Jim, the runaway slave, is probably the most honorable adult figure in the whole story, even despite the indignities visited on him, first by his position in society and then by the way Tom and Huck treat him as a plaything. And yet, for Huck who needs a REAL father, Jim is the one who steps up to be that father figure.
Speaking as a person who went to public school when I was in K-12, I cannot think of a subject that “upset me”. A lot of things bored me, or confused me, but nothing upset me.
I’m old though, and the subject matter was always mainstream conservative. The only thing I remember from high school, that might be considered controversial, was by a spinster teacher, who was proudly “Roman Catholic”, and told us that giving money to bums was not helpful to the bum, but only made the giver feel good. This shocked me at the time, but I know she was right.
I don't see the issue with that teacher. Race is discussed in school, as part of subjects like history, civics, social studies. Today, gender is, too. Actually it was then, too, because I remember discussing gayness in one class, but I can't recall which one. The teacher sounds concerned that parents are going to interfere in that. What's the problem? The problem is people like you are convinced (by those in power) that simply discussing these subjects is an attempt to 1. make white people feel guilty, and 2. "Groom" students to be gay (such nonsense).
You realize most teachers lead rather conservative lives, married, kids, church? Even in blue states, imagine that!
Let's have a conversation here. The snarky doesn't help. So who are people like me?
To the specific example of this teacher so I think you're OK with the idea that a teacher should be destabilizing the parent/child relationship and that it's also OK for the teacher to want to keep the classroom secret from the parents, who also happen to be the taxpayers paying for that lesson? Just want to be sure I understand your position.
Would you agree that it's OK if the teacher is teaching, say, "creation science" in the classroom and asks the students to keep the daily prayer session secret from their parents? If you don't like that example, pick some other.
You see, it has to work all ways. If it's OK to destabilize the beliefs in a parent/child relationship when you support what the teacher says, then it also has to be OK to do the same when you don't support what the teacher says.
You see, people like me believe that it's wrong in both cases for a teacher to insert their beliefs between the parent and the child. It is not the teacher's job to destabilize either way. Nothing in the classroom should be secret from the parents and the taxpayers -- taxpayers are entitled to sunshine on what they paid for. People like me believe the school should teach facts. If opinions are given, they should be clearly labeled as opinions and differing opinions should be welcome. People like me believe the job of the school system is to educate in fundamental facts and teach students how to think, not what to think.
If they're assigned upsetting material, they're not going to get a good education anyway, because the upsetting material will be off-putting to them. They won't understand the material, and won't retain whatever they're supposed to be learning from it. It will all just be a waste of time for them.
This is where everything tnff mentioned is key: good teaching/good lessons, carefully-chosen material that's age-appropriate, the well thought-out and age-appropriate learning objectives, etc.
The way Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn are taught, is to put the language in historical context. So students know, "this is how some people spoke back then, but we don't talk like that now, because it's not nice".
This is not a difficult issue. Teachers have been presenting the Mark Twain material for generations.
The book was edited and a new version came out that removed the "N" word and replaced it with "slave".
That was back in 2011.
Let's have a conversation here. The snarky doesn't help. So who are people like me?
To the specific example of this teacher so I think you're OK with the idea that a teacher should be destabilizing the parent/child relationship and that it's also OK for the teacher to want to keep the classroom secret from the parents, who also happen to be the taxpayers paying for that lesson? Just want to be sure I understand your position.
Would you agree that it's OK if the teacher is teaching, say, "creation science" in the classroom and asks the students to keep the daily prayer session secret from their parents? If you don't like that example, pick some other.
You see, it has to work all ways. If it's OK to destabilize the beliefs in a parent/child relationship when you support what the teacher says, then it also has to be OK to do the same when you don't support what the teacher says.
You see, people like me believe that it's wrong in both cases for a teacher to insert their beliefs between the parent and the child. It is not the teacher's job to destabilize either way. Nothing in the classroom should be secret from the parents and the taxpayers -- taxpayers are entitled to sunshine on what they paid for. People like me believe the school should teach facts. If opinions are given, they should be clearly labeled as opinions and differing opinions should be welcome. People like me believe the job of the school system is to educate in fundamental facts and teach students how to think, not what to think.
Let's have a conversation here. The snarky doesn't help. So who are people like me?
To the specific example of this teacher so I think you're OK with the idea that a teacher should be destabilizing the parent/child relationship and that it's also OK for the teacher to want to keep the classroom secret from the parents, who also happen to be the taxpayers paying for that lesson? Just want to be sure I understand your position.
Would you agree that it's OK if the teacher is teaching, say, "creation science" in the classroom and asks the students to keep the daily prayer session secret from their parents? If you don't like that example, pick some other.
You see, it has to work all ways. If it's OK to destabilize the beliefs in a parent/child relationship when you support what the teacher says, then it also has to be OK to do the same when you don't support what the teacher says.
You see, people like me believe that it's wrong in both cases for a teacher to insert their beliefs between the parent and the child. It is not the teacher's job to destabilize either way. Nothing in the classroom should be secret from the parents and the taxpayers -- taxpayers are entitled to sunshine on what they paid for. People like me believe the school should teach facts. If opinions are given, they should be clearly labeled as opinions and differing opinions should be welcome. People like me believe the job of the school system is to educate in fundamental facts and teach students how to think, not what to think.
I agree with everything in this post, particularly the bolded.
And, yes, we do have a current problem with a few teachers who don’t understand these concepts. There have always been teachers that go into the profession with the intent to change the next generation instead of what their real purpose should be, which is to educate the next generation. In the past they were either neutralized through principal leadership or quietly ran out of the profession and the remaining few not quiet as extreme versions took notice and changed how they acted accordingly. While I will tell you, based on current experience compared to the past, there really are more instances of these teachers, part of the current problem is social media has amplified it beyond it’s true scope. Another part of the equation is that social media encourages those with these tendencies to act on it, when they might not have in the past, because they now think “everyone” supports them because they fail to understand they are only communicating in self-selected echo chambers.
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When I post in bold red that is moderator action and, per the TOS, can only be discussed through Direct Message.
Speaking of the K-12 here, and mostly abut teens. I ask this reading through the comments on another thread here about a family upset that their teen read a monologue about lesbianism in an acting class. But I'm asking about more than that.
Subject material may be upsetting to kids in literature, history, science classes. They may not believe what the teacher is saying(politics, current events), or the material may be different that the way they've always understood it (history, literature), or touch on controversial subjects (religion, sex, race). Any or all of that can make a teen deeply uncomfortable.
Is that OK?
I'd argue that students who are never discomfited in school are generally getting an inferior education. Kids who don't get out their wheelhouse aren't truly learning IMO. Yeah, you can always differentiate this by how something is taught, what is being taught, how it's graded, etc. And I'm not suggesting something like 50 minutes of weeping and wailing every period. But I am asking in general. Should teens (or their families) have an expectation that classes shouldn't ever really upset the students? Like I say, that's not a real education in my book
Yeah pretty much all of that stuff does not belong in schools.
Yeah pretty much all of that stuff does not belong in schools.
But in many cases, how can teachers really educate without touching on these difficult topics. How do they teach Huckleberry Finn without discussing the issues of race and class? How can they teach World War II without bringing up race and religion?
I went to school in the 1980s and 90s, when we were really indoctrinated with the Cold War idea that America is the greatest country in the world and everything the US did was right and justified. It wasn't until I was an adult when I learned about Japanese internment camps, residential schools for indigenous children, sundown towns and the Tulsa massacre. There's this real push from conservative media that kids were being brainwashed by teachers, but I feel like I was being influenced by the particular narrative that was pushed by the choices that my school and teachers were making. And it wasn't the whole truth, either.
Let's have a conversation here. The snarky doesn't help. So who are people like me?
To the specific example of this teacher so I think you're OK with the idea that a teacher should be destabilizing the parent/child relationship and that it's also OK for the teacher to want to keep the classroom secret from the parents, who also happen to be the taxpayers paying for that lesson? Just want to be sure I understand your position.
Would you agree that it's OK if the teacher is teaching, say, "creation science" in the classroom and asks the students to keep the daily prayer session secret from their parents? If you don't like that example, pick some other.
You see, it has to work all ways. If it's OK to destabilize the beliefs in a parent/child relationship when you support what the teacher says, then it also has to be OK to do the same when you don't support what the teacher says.
You see, people like me believe that it's wrong in both cases for a teacher to insert their beliefs between the parent and the child. It is not the teacher's job to destabilize either way. Nothing in the classroom should be secret from the parents and the taxpayers -- taxpayers are entitled to sunshine on what they paid for. People like me believe the school should teach facts. If opinions are given, they should be clearly labeled as opinions and differing opinions should be welcome. People like me believe the job of the school system is to educate in fundamental facts and teach students how to think, not what to think.
I don't think they are destabilizing the parent-child relationship at all. I don't think they are inserting their beliefs on children, I think all of that is fear mongering. What happens when 17 parents think the subject material is fine, 3 want this or that taken out of it, 7 want it banned altogether, etc? It's absurd that parents today need to be a participant or observer in the classroom all of a sudden. It undermines teachers and authority in general IMO. It increases division, which is a much bigger threat to our country than a teacher putting a pic on her desk of her and her wife.
Here's the latest madness: North Dakota is considering a ban on any book that has any sexually explicit parts or discusses gender identity. This is NOT school libraries, but public libraries that adults go to. The GOP supposedly the party for individual freedoms, now wants to control what adults can read in their taxpayer supported library? What happened to, "if you don't like it, don't check that book out"? It became "I don't like this so you can't have it". It is BS that they are the party of individual's rights and freedom.
Any librarian who doesn't go along will spend 30 days in jail, under this bill. Anyone who has ever studied fascism should be terrified by all this. That's what the Nazi party did after coming to power in Germany pre-WWII. There are videos of them gleefully burning books. Silencing what you don't like doesn't make it go away.
"Books containing “sexually explicit” content — including depictions of sexual or gender identity — would be banned from North Dakota public libraries under legislation that state lawmakers began considering Tuesday.
The GOP-dominated state House Judiciary Committee heard arguments but did not take a vote on the measure, which applies to visual depictions of “sexually explicit” content and proposes up to 30 days imprisonment for librarians who refuse to remove the offending books."
But in many cases, how can teachers really educate without touching on these difficult topics. How do they teach Huckleberry Finn without discussing the issues of race and class? How can they teach World War II without bringing up race and religion?
I went to school in the 1980s and 90s, when we were really indoctrinated with the Cold War idea that America is the greatest country in the world and everything the US did was right and justified. It wasn't until I was an adult when I learned about Japanese internment camps, residential schools for indigenous children, sundown towns and the Tulsa massacre. There's this real push from conservative media that kids were being brainwashed by teachers, but I feel like I was being influenced by the particular narrative that was pushed by the choices that my school and teachers were making. And it wasn't the whole truth, either.
Thank you, they can't. People are acting like teaching is memorization of facts, and that's all kids need. They are supposed to be learning critical thinking, too. It is not possible to have an open discussion when there are all these banned subjects and banned words by snowflake parents so paranoid little Johnny is going to feel bad about himself as a white person if he learns about the history of race in this country.
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